I am reviewing the animated movie Spirit which is a very good family film. I think this film should appeal most to people who are involved with horses in some way as the theme of the film is horses. It's set at the time of the war between the American Indians and the other Americans which is mostly the cavalry. The main character is a wild horse who lives with a herd. Initially he is captured by cowboys who sell him to the cavalry who try to break him but he befriends a captured Native American and they both escape. I think this film contrasts the rather cruel methods used by the cavalry to break horses with the methods used by the American Indians which seem almost like animal psychology. An example of this is when you greet a horse you look him up and down which of course is what horses do. Anyway the American Indian has a young mare and the key character is really attracted to her even though he longs to back in the wild. He is recaptured by the cavalry who put him to work helping drag a steam locomotive and of course this results in chaos. He gets reunited with the young mare and there is a happy ending naturally. It's quite funny when the cavalry are trying to break him especially when things happen like someone falling off him and being chased by him. It's quite an enjoyable movie. Matt Damon provides the voice of the American Indian & John Cromwell provides it for the cruel colonel. Both are great in their roles. I think nowadays there is a lot more emphasis on using psychology with animals & I know when I bought a dog, someone suggested I get a book on dog psychology and it was a great help.

I am reviewing the novel Gone by James Patterson which is a very good thriller which I bought from kindle. This novel is the 6th installment in the Michael Bennett series where we have a policeman in who serves in New York who lost his wife to cancer but who has 9 adopted children all adopted by an Irish nanny called Mary Catherine who is devoted to her job and has a bit of a crush on Mike. At the beginning of this book there is a big gangster take over where a load of dons in the mafia and their families are wiped out. The man responsible is hispanic and offered a deal to the dons some time ago but it got scoffed at. It starts off a bit like the James Bond where we would see a terrifying baddie and think how on earth is in this case Mike and his family going to deal with this even though we know he is going to come out on top. Anyway apparently Michael broke the nose and arrested the hispanic gangster some time ago so he and his family along with their nanny go in hiding. Their only hope is for Mike to help the FBI find these crooks which means working with Emily Parker who is a past love interest and a bit of a rival to his nanny and he is going out with the latter. There is also at least one informant within the police effort to find this man which means the baddie knows everything including where Mike's family are. The baddie also kidnaps and kills people in a bid to get back at Mike. Of course it does have a happy ending. I did enjoy reading it and it keeps your interest throughout, not to mention there is lots of tension.

I am reviewing the book The True Peruvian Route by Mark Horrell which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Mount Aconcagua is just about in Argentina and is very close to the border with Peru. It's the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere at a tad under 7,000 metres. This book is about an ascent up this mountain by the author and an assorted group from several different countries some of which were a bit inexperienced. They went with a peruvian guide who had discovered this route up the mountain some years ago. The traditional way up Aconcagua is called the Polish Glacier Route which was first climbed by a polish team although technically it doesn't follow a glacier. The other route is called The False Polish Glacier Route which the author renamed The True Peruvian Route and is the best route up the mountain because it avoids the ice sheet which tends to go hard when it doesn't snow and it becomes difficult to drive anything into it like spikes. Their guide held the world record for the most ascents of Aconcagua at 56 & apparently on 3 occasions when he was taking a more gentle approach up the mountain, a stray dog followed him to the summit. Someone did joke that maybe the dog has climbed the mountain more times than him. According to Argentine law there is a basecamp part way up the mountain, manned by doctors which examine you to make sure you are able to climb the mountain. These doctors are quite junior and a bit inexperienced about altitude and sometimes make the wrong decision at least according to the author. Often the climber is the best judge of whether he is capable or not at least when an experienced climber. I think he might have a point there. Apparently Mark has a web site at http://markhorrell.com .This book isn't quite as good as the one on Columbia but is still pretty good.

The book I read to research this post was Cocuy Sniffing In Colombia by Mark Horrell which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The title to this book is a bit of a joke because as most people know most of the world's cocaine comes from Colombia and many addicts come to this country for that reason. The author being white was accosted by people selling coke but he is a mountaineer who writes about his experiences and that is why he chose to visit. This book is quite short but is quite informative and tells you quite a bit about the recent history of this country. Bogarta is the capital of Colombia and has 7 million people and is situated on a plateau 2,600 metres high. Colombia is starting to find its feet as a tourist destination and until fairly recently it was very risky to venture outside this city due to kidnappings of both tourists and locals by guerrillas and drug lords who controlled much of the surrounding area. They used to also force families in those areas to give their sons to them as members and if they refused they killed the entire family. Fairly recently the government sent 20,000 troops in to drive the guerrillas back into the lowlands so much of the country is now relatively safe. There is a novel which was made into a film called Clear And Present Danger by Tom Clancy which is based on this war in Colombia and also stars Harrison Ford and is very good. Anyway getting back to Colombia the author climbed the 2nd highest peak in this country and toured much of the mountains and glaciers surrounding Bogarta. The glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate and it won't be long before they vanish completely. He does also say he'd love to climb Colombia's highest peak but tourists are banned from that area which is owned and populated by indigenous people or a tribal group. The author is writing a feature length book about his ascent of Mt Everest which he did recently but has written quite a lot of short ebooks about his visits to various mountainous areas around the world. They are normally priced quite cheaply.

The book I read to research this post was Nelson's Spy which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is a history of Alexander Scott who may have been a spy at the time of the Battle Of Trafalgar and was a close friend of Lord Nelson. He may have been a key person in the outcome of the battle and helped tend to Nelson when he was mortally wounded. It was a battle between the British & French navies and it was the British who won. Alexander was a minister which enabled him to evade suspicion as a spy and also hear things because many people dropped their guard with a member of the clergy. He got the chance to do lots of travelling and lived to a ripe old age. His daughter wrote this book of recollections about him in 1842 and it has recently had an introduction added and been republished. Alexander came from a wealthy family but decided to go into the clergy because he lacked money. Many clergy men were able to save a nice nest egg and certainly Nelson rewarded him for any information. At one stage fresh from having a post in the navy he was offered a job as a chaplain on a smallish ship but felt it was a step backwards. Nelson told him if he got in an influential position he would make sure he was offered a better job. Spies were very important and could make the difference between winning or losing a battle. Even if their ships were outnumbered they could try and force a ship to put into port to try and even the odds or force a ship to go on the open sea where they could engage it in battle.

I am reviewing the business autobiography In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Tamara is famous as the part owner of Jimmy Chou Company in which she designed a lot of the shoes and boots they sold. Before that she worked for a women's magazine and did a backpage feature on footwear. She got made redundant from that job and had a bit of a drug and drink habit which had to be sorted out. She did go to a rehab centre. She had by then met up with a shoemaker and suggested she could look after the day to day operations of the business and this man, Jimmy Chou could make the shoes. They had a hell of a job getting funding and later they focused on breaking into the American market. They tried to get celebrities to wear their shoes at functions like the Oscars. Kate Winslett almost unbelievably mentioned her Jimmy Chou boots during her acceptance speech. Sales then really took off. At this point Tamara was just drawing a salary of $15,000 per year although later on she would become extremely rich. Funnily enough in those days when Jimmy learned to make shoes, little emphasis was put on designing them. Eventually after the company had been going for a few years and was one of the designer label toasts of the town, Tamara had a cut from the $101 million it was valued at when it went public. She eventually got annoyed that the new set up skimped on materials which she thought would ruin the companies success. She currently has her own new fashion label called Tamara Mellon which will focus on limited edition fashion goods which she is expanding on the shoes and handbags the previous company did.

The book I read to research this post was Malware Forensics Field Guide For Windows Systems by Eoghan Casey et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book looks at the legal aspects mostly according to American law and also looks at the technical aspects of dealing with a virus infestation on either a network or desktop pc. It lists loads of software that can do the various jobs, far too many to list here and looks at doing the basics with some of this software. Eoghan is a bit of a legend in Digital Forensics and I have read quite a lot of books by him. There is also quite a lot of posts on different aspects of digital forensics at my computing blog at http://scratbag.me & my technology blog at http://scratbagroberts.com
If your computer is attacked by malware it's best to analyze it in a live state which means with out re booting it which will often destroy any evidence. Many professionals use MD5 or Memory Digest 5 to copy the hard drive. One problem facing you in this job is there is various types of memory that all need to be copied. Another problem is what you copy it to, in most cases it will be an external hard drive due to the enormous amount of data. Also copying it to writable media like dvdr's takes longer. A good program that will copy a network to another network hard drive is Encase Enterprise. A lot of malware nowadays contains keyloggers to find things like passwords, something to locate credit card numbers & an email address for this information to be sent to. One way you can spot malware is you use a port sniffer like wireshark it will constantly try to access the internet to send its newfound information. This book is nearly 1,000 pages and covers every aspect of malware and I really enjoyed reading it.

The book I read to research this post was British Railway Signalling by Alan Williams et al which is an excellent book which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. This book is probably not one that anyone is likely to see for sale so I focus on railway signalling rather than reviewing the book. Currently in Britain they are changing the old fashioned signally methods to computerized regional railway control centres like at Crewe & at Saltley near Birmingham. A lot of things like the types of signal used remains unchanged however. At one time when a train passed a signal it stayed on go until just before the next train arrived then would signal that a train had passed as that train passed. There was an accident however when due to ice the signal couldn't go back to stop so now the signal always go to stop until it needs to go to go. Black & yellow signals indicate distance and black and white signals indicate whether the way is clear or not. If the signal is in a horizontal position it's unsafe to proceed and vertical indicates it's safe. On an ordinary line a train will have to stop if a train has gone by in the last 5 minutes or slow down if in the last 10 minutes. Of course this would tend to be where routes converge. Similiarly if you are at a station the signals will go to a vertical state if the train is within 5 minutes travel time. On single stretches they used to give a driver a token to indicate he was the only user on that track and that token would be handed in at the end of the single stretch. Only 1 driver at a time would have a token. The token can take many forms but generally is shaped like a key and comes out of a special machine.

I am reviewing the thriller novel The Up And Comer by Howard Roughan which is an excellent story which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. Howard has co written various novels with James Patterson and does seem like a pretty good thriller writer. This novel isn't that different to the kind of thing Patterson writes. The book plays with your emotions quite skilfully and the key character who is an up and coming lawyer in a successful firm, hence the title, does starts off as not very likable but I did find myself feeling sorry for him by the end of the book although perhaps justifiably there is a bitter sweet ending. It's very skilfully written and it does seem a shame it hasn't reached a more mainstream audience. The plot is a lawyer in a successful firm who is married to the bosses daughter is having an affair with the bosses wife who he is meant to be defending on a driving whilst under the influence charge. Then an ex friend of his comes back in his life and has snaps of him and the bosses wife that incriminate him. He wants a $100,000 to keep quiet and threatens this bloke and refuses to pay up. In the meantime he joins a poker circle with some friends and cleans up with lots of money, he gets $3,000 alone when he joins the group but it makes sense to pay the ex friend to stay quiet especially when he discovers he knows his boss. Anyway by a twist of circumstances he ends up killing the ex friend more in manslaughter than murder but makes it look like a robbery gone wrong. At this point his whole starts to come apart and the police are hot on his trail. I really enjoyed this book and it definitely keeps your interest throughout.

The book I read to research this post was This Is York Major Railway Centre which is more a special magazine than a book. In this post I will focus more on writing about York than a review. York was connected to the railways quite early on because there was a railway around Newcastle & George Hudson had the foresight to see what was needed when they were building a railway from London was a long distance railway. He also helped orchestrate the building of the railway station & main hotel for rail travellers which were both very impressive. Hudson went on to manage the railway company when it became a regional company but dabble in underhand practises even by those days standards and eventually got the sack. A man called Leeman was responsible for catching him out and the National Railway Museum is on Leeman Street, a road dedicated to him. For many years Hudson was villified in York and it's only more recently a road has been named after him. York was the only place in Britain where you could see Atlantic expresses in 4 liveries. Carlisle had the edge in that 7 companies ran to the Citadel station but both places were a train spotters dream. At one stage at the museum there was a fire which claimed one of The Mallard's A4 sister locomotives. Of course the A4 was the fastest steam locomotive ever built and The Mallard which is on display here is the fastest steam locomotive ever and holds the world record. There are numerous steam railways privately run in Yorkshire. The Derwent Valley Railway used to have light in the title but this confused many people into thinking it was a narrow gauge railway which probably lost them business.